Postcards from paradise

A U-T San Diego story last week chronicled research by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of some of the world’s richest reefs off remote Pacific Islands, where vast corals teem with fish, turtles rays and sharks, housing 10 times as many sea creatures as Hawaiian reefs.

One Reader, Newton Stafford, of Escondido, tells us he saw those reefs 70 years ago. And they were just as spectacular then.

“I read your article in the U-T today, which I appreciated very much,” wrote Stafford, 89, who served in the Navy on the Line Islands during World War II, including the island of Palmyra. “Without a doubt Palmyra is the richest coral and marine (environment) I have ever seen. I have fond memories of the life on that atoll.”

In a subsequent conversation, Stafford said he was stationed in an air sea rescue group on the Line Islands, 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, after joining the Navy in 1942. Despite the horrors occurring elsewhere in the war, Stafford found himself in paradise.

“It’s just a wonderland to walk there, on the reefs,” he said. “It was just like a thunder of (fish) going through the water. The coral out there is absolutely the richest, most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”

Elusive coconut crabs measured more than a yard across, he said.

“They were enormous,” he said. “They would be dangerous to your finger. … They were rare to see, but when you did see them, it was a big event.”

Frigate birds would lay in wait for returning sea birds, then attack them in their own version of aerial battles, he said.

“It was a delightful display of aerial acrobatics by the birds,” he said.

Stafford took the ecological lesson to heart when he returned from the war, earning a biology degree from University of Southern California and working as a chemistry teacher, focused on troubled kids. He lives in a custom, energy-efficient home in Escondido, but stopped off at Palmyra twice more on cruises with his wife.

“This was really a paradise,” he said. “I’ve never been anyplace that I have such fond memories of.”